There's a bizarre Snapchat trend taking over

Today it isn’t just the Snapchat accounts of
famous-for-being-famous starlets that are garnering the most
attention. Instead, it’s the surgeons behind some of the
country’s most impressive cosmetic transformations that are
taking the social app by storm. While the ‘Snaps’
themselves might be NSFW, that doesn’t stop hundreds of thousands
of viewers who follow these surgeons, all for a glimpse at what
happens behind the surgical curtain.

New York’s own Dr. Matthew Schulman, a board-certified
plastic surgeon, partakes in the Snapchat trend and was even
named as one of International Business
Times’ Top 17 Snapchat accounts to follow in 2016. The
surgeon, who has been practicing for just about 10 years now,
says that he started using social media around four years ago,
hoping that it might help spread the word about his practice. It
wasn’t until one year ago, and the birth of “Nycplasticsurg,”
that Dr. Schulman realized he’d found the key to both increasing
business and giving the people what they want. “People still
think that Snapchat is how you send nude pictures,” he says, “but
now it’s very different.”

Through a combination of professional educational and a touch of
personality, Dr. Schulman’s Snapchat account now gets over
100,000 views per story. Procedures that he coins “mommy
makeovers,” like tummy tucks or breast augmentations, garner the
most attention. Also popular, unsurprisingly, is the Brazilian
Butt Lift. Dr. Schulman explained that many of his new patients
actually find him through Snapchat, and that most feel an instant
familiarity with him and his staff because of it. It also hasn’t
been as difficult as one may think to obtain patients’ consent to
be recorded.

When asked why they opted in to have their surgeries broadcast to
hundreds of thousands of viewers, former patients Sharntai Harris
and Michelle Rentas both wanted to pay it forward. After having
watched several of Dr. Schulman’s surgeries, both women agreed to
being taped on account that they might help others understand the
surgical process. And yes, both women did watch their own
procedures. Rentas even explained that her family watched in
real-time for peace of mind.

“My family watched the whole thing while they were waiting for me
to be done,” she says. “It was like they were right there in the
operating room.” Dr. Schulman further elaborated saying,
“Normally the family would wait in the waiting room, stress and
get anxious, waiting for my nurse to go out and reassure them
that things are going well. Now, they’re able to go leave for
lunch or walk around, and still follow it live on Snapchat.”

The rules remain: nudity is at its minimum, no faces are shown
(aside from the handful of patients willing to do pre and
post-surgery Snapchat interviews) and definitely no horsing
around. At the end of the day, Dr. Schulman is only showing a
small portion of a lengthy, complicated procedure—just, one might
say, a snapshot of it.